The Plot: Adam is college student battle rap fan who attends the University of Berkeley who is writing a paper on battle rap (D-Lor pun?). He interviews Ben Grimm (Spelling?) after a battle in the Killafornia Battle League and the two become close friends. The story follows Adam’s journey into battle rap from the beginning to his end and all the people he meets along with the life challenges and diversity in battle rap. I won’t spoil it too much more. The movie is two hours in length and they do cram a lot in there in a short period of time but some of the objectives and things they go through are very accurate. This movie should take place in 2010 or something lol. They stay in a shitty hotel in LA for a battle trip, deal with small league owners and talk a lot about the writing process and the cultural acceptance of battle rap.

The acting: Diz and DFD were solid actors. They played their roles well and I was pretty impressed. Hollow was OK as well. He wasn’t asked to do much.
At the end Joseph Khan took questions and I took notes. I asked him his favorite leagues and battlers and he said KOTD, URL, GrindTime and his favorite battlers are Hollow, Diz, and Kid Twist. He said Kid Twist wrote 80% of the material and battle scenes. Diz, DFD, Hollow, Loaded Lux wrote their own stuff.

Overall: This honestly felt like a run back through memory lane of height of battle rap (2008-2012) to me. The story is very nostalgic and if you’ve been a fan of battle rap for a long time you will enjoy it. It is fairly accurate and we can all relate to what Adam went through. The actor who played Adam did a really good job. They coached him up well. The plot was kind of weak though especially at the end of the movie. It was kind of predictable but it was made to introduce a new audience to battling. If you haven’t watched or followed rap battles I don’t think this movie will interest you at all. It doesn’t have the mainstream commercial appeal of an 8 Mile. Some of the parts of the movie lacked substance. Think of it as a high-level overview. I thought Dizaster and Dumbfoundead were solid actors. I think this movie will do well on YouTube when it’s released but I can see why it didn’t make the big theaters. I enjoyed it though as a fan and the theater served beer and wine so that made it more fun as well.